


24 Hour (Office) Party People

by GhostofBambi



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Office, F/M, Office Party
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-02 02:18:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19189930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GhostofBambi/pseuds/GhostofBambi
Summary: One day. Three-hundred days. One bawdy party. Chaos.





	1. the beginning bit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BeeDaily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeeDaily/gifts).



> This is a fic for my darling delicious Bee.
> 
> It was _supposed_ to be a birthday oneshot but it got stupidly long, then I had a stupid health scare which basically derailed my creativity, and then _Game of Thrones_ season 8 happened and that was stupid too, and anyway it's a whole, stupid thing. She knows about it. The Arya/Gendry break-up alone took seven full years and at least eight months off my life expectancy.
> 
> Bee, my lovely, not only have you written some brilliant, spectacular, amazing fics in my honour, but your marvellous, wonderful, life-affirming friendship is the most wonderful gift a girl can ask for. Thank you for the phone calls and the laughter and the nights you've spent talking me through my anxiety. I love you and can't wait to see you in 101 days!
> 
> Sidebar—this fic bears no resemblance to _24 Hour Party People,_ the movie. I have never even _seen_ that movie.

**part one: the beginning bit** **  
** **(or, how she took a nosedive in the first place)**

 **May 14th, 2018, 8:09 a.m.** **  
** **(day one)**

Remus appears by her desk like a pop-up advert, the bastard.

An obnoxious pop-up advert, Lily might clarify. A video advert. With sound. One of those adverts that blasts off as soon as the web-page opens and scares the shit out of her while she's scrolling through celebrity news articles—her secret shame, but she can't help wanting to know what Jude Law's been up to lately—in the dead of night.

"Good morning, Lily," he says, smiling like a lamb. "This is James."

He makes the announcement with zero fanfare, much in the same way one might say "this is a baked potato," except James is certainly _not_ a baked potato, but the only child of the CEO, and Lily Evans has just shoved a bacon baguette into her wide open trap.

Bastard. Scheming, pop-up bastard.

But she can't ad-block the office manager. It's unworkable. And unprofessional.

Besides, she's been expecting Remus to get his revenge since she covered his desk in printouts of John Travolta, who makes him uneasy for reasons he can't or won't explain. She prefaces all of her emails to Remus with "Yo, Adele Dazeem," for that very reason.

So...yes, a rebuttal was expected.

Sneaking up on her with Fleamont's son in tow while Lily is inhaling her breakfast like a wildebeest—admittedly, with flagrant disregard for the office's policy on eating hot food at one's desk (don't do it!)—and neglecting her morning's work in favour of shopping online for a new mattress, though, is beyond devious, beyond dastardly.

It's also extremely characteristic of Remus, who approaches pranks with effortless sardonicism and knows that Lily's Achilles' heel is appearing unprofessional to important strangers.

Strangers like the beloved baby boy of her ultimate boss, for example.

She's startled. It's understandable.

Anyone _would_ be startled, were they happily chowing down on a bacon sarnie and considering the benefits of natural latex foam without a care in the world, only to be assailed by man who jumps out at her unexpectedly to offer a slyly angelic smile and an innocent "this is James," as a counter-strike.

Particularly since she isn't meant to be meeting "this is James" for another hour.

And especially since she had been hoping to impress upon "this is James" the notion that she is not a woman to be trifled with, schemed against, or otherwise mistreated.

Her fright results in a minor ketchup spillage, which is unfortunate. It dribbles down her chin and fails to land upon her blouse only because Lily swipes her hand over her face to catch most of it before it can drip away. Her breakfast is set down on her desk and she grabs a paper napkin to wipe both chin and hand, waving the latter towards her own chest to indicate that she's still chewing. That's the thing to do when one is caught with food in one's mouth, as if a woman should have to apologise for needing sustenance to survive.

"Should we come back?" Remus asks her, eyeing the mostly uneaten baguette. "I can take him downstairs if you're not ready and—"

"Nnnnmp!" says Lily, shaking her head, and swallows. "S'all fine. Hi."

Adele Dazeem will die for this.

He just _had_ to catch her at a gluttonous moment and nab his revenge at the cost of her poise. No chance of him stopping by as she was nibbling on a rice cake or laughing prettily over a salad the way women in lifestyle articles always do. "Ooh, what a healthy and fulfilling life I lead!" they seem to cry, their plastic smiles stretched widely across their unnaturally white teeth. "Greens! Pilates! Chopped zucchini! So unsatisfying! I'm laughing through the pain!"

Only Lily never nibbles rice cakes because they taste like paper. She occasionally eats salads for the sake of nutrition, but it's an utterly joyless experience.

"Yes, hello," Remus replies, visibly battling a laugh, the smug, scheming pop-up bastard. "As I'm sure you're aware, this is James Potter. James, this is Lily Evans"—he gestures towards her—"otherwise known as the woman who took your job."

"It's really good to finally meet you," James Potter tells her, holding out his hand.

"Likewise," she lies as she takes it. "Though Remus _has_ just made me sound like some kind of corporate supervillain."

"I'm sure I didn't."

"It's fine," says James. "I couldn't expect my dad to keep the job open after I left—"

"Your poor mother certainly did," Remus puts in.

"So I heard," Lily replies.

"She tells me you're a wonder," says James.

Lily shrugs lightly. "Christ the Redeemer, Machu Picchu, me. Sounds about right."

"You slot right in."

"Lucky for your dad that I do. Euphemia's not afraid to voice an opinion."

"Well, he hired me back as soon as I asked," James continues, a slight smile forming around the corners of his lips, "so nepotism is still alive and well, which should make her happy."

Instantly, strangely, disconcertingly, Lily thinks that she would like to have sex with this person.

Preferably on her new mattress. Her current one has a spring sticking out in an inconvenient location.

The photos that Fleamont keeps on his desk are woefully out-of-date, so while Lily had the vague idea that she'd be welcoming a good-looking guy onto her team, her only frame of reference was an awkward, gangling teenager. The real life, adult James Potter is tall and lean and healthy-glow brown, with thick black hair that performs wild, multi-directional acrobatics and cries out to be tugged in the heat of passion. His glasses are on trend, his full lips delicious, and his crisp white sleeves are pushed up to his elbows.

Women are forced to conform to so many bullshit, patriarchal dress codes in the workplace, but nobody ever thinks about the risks of forearm exposure on a really fit bloke.

Not that it matters, when she's splashed ketchup across her face and almost certainly marked herself out as an undesirable.

More importantly, she's technically his boss.

And he's likely secretly wishing that she wasn't.

Or planning a hostile takeover.

Or both.

He probably looks real good without a shirt on.

She'll be screwed if he turns out to be interesting.

 **March 8th, 2019, 11:13 a.m.** **  
** **(day two hundred and ninety-nine)**

By the time Lily finishes her last appraisal, the booze is out and flowing.

She'd seen Peter—who had shed his usual jeans and Sunderland jersey in favour of a smart shirt and pressed trousers—setting up a long trestle table near the filing cabinets as she and Kingsley were heading towards Meeting Room 4. That was an hour ago; now it's creaking under the weight of a hundred different bottles and has attracted quite a crowd.

"People are drinking already," she says to Kingsley, watching in amused disbelief as Gia from HR and non-famous Claire Danes from Finance clink their glasses together.

"I know," Kingsley agrees, with a longing little sigh.

"You'd think Gia would know better, at least. She's HR."

"HR are always the worst offenders," says Kingsley. "Them and Black. He's not going to survive the hour, let alone a full day."

Unsurprisingly, Social Media Sirius (not his official job title) is lurching past the girls with a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue in his hand, gulping its contents directly from its mouth. Not far from him, half the gang from Sales are pouring themselves generous helpings of vodka and topping them up with infinitesimal splashes of cranberry juice. Even Remus is nursing a glass of white and chatting merrily to Bertha Jorkins, who nobody in the office can bear talking to, not even Peter.

"It's eleven in the morning," says Lily, and laughs. "Is this even _allowed?"_

"Probably not." Kingsley lowers himself into his chair with his usual feline grace, watching the drinks table with obvious longing. "But you know, it's Sirius. General Zod is less untouchable."

"The meal doesn't even start until one," Lily points out, rather than admit that she has no idea who General Zod is.

Kingsley makes a vague noise of assent and starts tapping away at his keyboard.

Her team is the only one on this floor who have remained in their seats, Lily notes, assessing the small cluster of desks belonging to Product Development. Kingsley, of course, is putting on a good show of perusing his emails whilst watching the assembled drinkers out of the corner of his eye. Katie is working diligently on a report for the upcoming launch of a new range of no-tears kids' shampoos (the dinosaur shaped bottles proved a real treat with focus groups), Ria is finishing up a call with a vendor, and while she can't see what Eliza's doing, Lily suspects that she's cleaning up the team's shared scanning drive. She's the only one who ever does.

The only person missing is James, who might be with his father, or in the toilet, or...wherever, honestly.

But Lily doesn't want to ask about James Potter, or think about him, or look as if she cares.

She unlocks her computer and opens the window she had carefully minimised when Kingsley stopped by her desk to declare himself free for evaluation, her eyes falling on the last sentence of an application that she isn't even sure she ought to send.

She glances briefly at Sirius, who has just let out an unnecessary whoop.

She sighs.

"Guys, do you _really_ think I'd be a stick-in-the-mud if you wanted to start drinking now?" she asks aloud.

"Pardon?" says Katie, swivelling around in her seat to look at Lily over the top of her reading glasses. "Be a stick-in-the-mud about what?"

"People are drinking already," says Eliza.

"Oh," says Katie, her gaze landing upon the trestle table. "I hadn't even noticed."

"Of course you aren't a stick-in-the-mud, babe," is Kingsley's monotonous, autopilot response.

"Besides, the meal doesn't start for another two hours," Eliza reminds her, just as Ria ends her call.

"I know that," says Lily, "but it hasn't stopped anybody else, has it?"

"Well, I mean," says Eliza, glancing warily at Kingsley. "It _is_ meant to be an all-day party..."

"Go," says Lily firmly, and immediately finds herself dazzled by a Kingsley's perfect, effulgent teeth. "Seriously, go and get smashed. It's not like you can get anything done with all the noise."

"Are you sure?" says Eliza, already half out of her chair.

Lily waves them towards the table. "It's fine, enjoy yourselves! I'll be with you in a minute."

Her team leaves their bank of desks as a unit, though each of them pauses to offer Lily some profuse form of thanks before they do.

She's fortunate to lead a team of people who respect her so much that they'll wait for her approval before drinking themselves into a mid-morning stupor, rather than swanning off without permission like Sirius obviously did. He's supposed to report to Elaine, who heads up Digital Marketing, but all he seems to do is stroll around the building like a smirking poltergeist, pausing occasionally in his meanderings to start yet another Twitter war with some other company. He's parked himself on James's desk for a chat so often that Lily's surprised his arse hasn't left an imprint.

At the very least, he's probably buffed away the varnish.

James's coat is slung over the back of his chair, but Lily hasn't seen him since she arrived at the office this morning. He'd needed to speak to his dad about something, he'd told her, promising to return in twenty minutes, but that was two hours ago and he hasn't resurfaced.

No doubt some last minute matters of succession need to be discussed, and what better day to hold such a conversation than on the day of Fleamont's big retirement party?

Not that James would ever agree to...or he would, and she's been totally wrong about him this whole time.

Would he?

How can Lily claim to know for sure, either way?

Their working relationship—their friendship, it _had_ been a friendship and she'll cling to that until she's old and grey—feels like a shadow of what it once was. It's a dried husk, but it was pretty and sparkling until she knocked it to the ground and let it shatter. James Potter has been an opalescent mystery to Lily for the past two months, and that's more her fault than his.

The application sits open on her monitor, glaring daggers at her, silently clamouring for her prompt attention.

She could do it, she knows. It's completed already. Proofread. Spellchecked. Has met her exacting standards. All it would take is one click of the mouse and she'll be halfway there. They already want her back. She'd likely get a much higher—

"Hey," says James, behind her.

She jumps half out of her skin, her heart slapping against her ribs at the sudden interruption, and hastens to minimise the website window before he can see what she's doing.

James Potter is the last person who needs to know that she's been looking at other jobs.

If he finds out, he might figure out why she's doing it, and Lily is barely capable of stomaching her own garbled reasons without enduring his thoughts on the matter yet.

"You scared me!" she breathlessly admonishes, with one hand on her chest, and spins her chair in his direction to glance at him briefly. "Jesus Christ, James. A warning next time would be nice."

Then she spins back, because she doesn't like to look at him for very long nowadays. James has this infuriating habit of maintaining eye contact when he speaks to her, and in response Lily's heart seems to believe that it's up for a prime role in a production of Stomp. For the sake of cardiac wellness, her gaze is best kept diverted towards her computer, where the most pleasing image available is a stock photo background of a white sand beach.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I'll put it in your calendar next time I plan to sit at my desk, ensure you're notified fifteen minutes in advance."

He sets a steaming mug of tea down on her coaster, the one her sister sent her for Christmas. It bears a professionally shot photograph of Petunia and her vile husband, Vernon, snuggling their bouncing baby boy.

Lily hates the coaster and uses it only because she's compelled to by guilt, though she's scribbled Vernon's face out with a Sharpie.

"What's that?" she asks, as if she can't tell.

"It's tea."

"Why?"

James sighs as he drops into his own chair, which he swivels in her direction at once, one hand lifting to scratch the back of his head. "I was in the kitchen, there were teabags available, you like tea." His foot stretches out to nudge the base of her chair. "Case cracked, Marple. What was that web-page you just hid?"

"Porn." She locks her computer and leans over her desk, resting her weight on her crossed forearms. "Why aren't you over there?" she asks him, nodding in Sirius's direction. "Wouldn't you rather be tucking into a vodka with your bestie?"

"Because I'm over here with you, and it's not even noon. I'm good," says James. He lifts his mug of coffee to demonstrate, effectively forcing her to look at him. "Aren't you going to ask how my meeting went?"

"Of course not."

"Why not?"

"It's not my business."

"But you make everything your business, Poirot." He nudges her chair again as he sets his coffee down, a slow grin forming, happier now that he's got her attention. "Go on, ask. You _always_ want to ask."

It's a teasing comment, she knows, designed to goad her into a playful rebuttal, but her playful rebuttals have been very thin on the ground as of late.

Again, that's more Lily's fault than it is his. James is constantly reassuring her that everything is fine and that she should stop feeling guilty, but he might as well be asking her to dunk her head in the ocean and come up with dry, non-polluted hair. Her guilt encompasses a far wider range of mistakes than he's aware of.

If anyone has the right to be made aware of those mistakes, it's probably him, but that's...all a mess.

Her mess, more specifically. He seems to have cleaned his up pretty well.

"I don't want to ask," she says, and turns back to her monitor. Fifteen seconds of direct eye contact have turned her insides all to mush. "I want—" With a clunking feeling in her stomach, her lie fizzles away abruptly. "Nothing."

"You want what?"

"I was going to say that I want to get some work done before the meal," she sighs, "but I've already locked my laptop, so that's not exactly believable."

"Ah. A rookie mistake."

"Oi, I've had a stressful morning. Forgive me if my reflexes aren't as sharp as I'd like."

"Well, I'm not sure if this will make your morning more or less stressful," says James, inching closer to her in his chair, "but I really _do_ want to talk about the meeting with you." He glances over at the drinks table. "In private, preferably."

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what he's going to say.

Dominique, who heads the entire Marketing and Communications department, is moving up to the board of directors at the end of the month, and Fleamont's intention is to replace her before he formally retires in a fortnight. Lily had submitted an application to take Dom's spot and was hoping to hear back about an interview soon, but James's dad has obviously handed the position to his son.

If not that, then he's put him on the board, or handed him some kind of opportunity that she will ultimately be denied as a result.

Ten months ago, it would have enraged her, and the idea of being passed over for an employee she outranks still rattles her bones, but...

A lot has happened between then and now. Ten months ago, James Potter wasn't her friend.

Not that he's her friend _now,_ either.

Still, things have changed, substantially, and if James feels the need to break the news of his success to her gently— _in private,_ so she can be upset and jealous far away from prying eyes—if he really thinks that's _still_ the thing she cares about the most, that's…

Her fault.

She knows.

"Look," she begins, trying her best to sound easy, breezy and beautiful, like the Cover Girl she isn't. "It's _fine,_ honestly."

"No, the thing is—"

"Fleamont is your father—"

"It's not family stuff, it's—"

"There's Beatrice!" Lily cuts over him, and waves over her friend, who has just appeared on the scene. Bea works on the ground floor—the only woman in the IT department—and she's already wearing her gold sequinned party dress. "Hey! Wow, you look gorgeous!"

"You should've seen the lads when I walked in, so thirsty," says Bea, advancing towards them both with her slender arms spread wide. Her long brown hair is styled in artful waves, rather than its usual, poker-straight uniformity. "Where's your outfit?" She eyes Lily's sensible, fitted, powder blue shift dress warily. "You're not wearing _that_ to the party, are you?"

"I've brought a change of clothes in my bag," she says, just as James pipes up with a stubbornly defensive, "I like what she's wearing now."

The sincerity in his voice makes Lily's heart spasm with pathetic, devoted, puppy-dog adoration.

He's just…he's so…

He makes her _feel_ so...

"So do I," says Bea, bulldozing through this tender moment. "It's great for a formal meeting, but not so great for getting shit-faced."

"I'm not going to get shit-faced at a work event," says Lily, feeling suspiciously warm in the face. "That's not—"

"Oh, hush, and come and have a drink," Beatrice flatly insists, before she swoops down and picks up Lily's hand. "You can decide how drunk you're gonna be later." To James, she flashes a winning smile. "You don't mind me borrowing your work wife, right?"

James, also, seems to colour a bit at the suggestion, but his neutral expression doesn't change. "Actually, we were—"

"You were, now you aren't, thanks. I'll get her back before curfew." Beatrice tugs at Lily's hand, so she allows her friend to heave her to her feet. "But get changed first."

"Yeah, I will, if you just—" She pulls her hand from Beatrice's grip and twists around to pick up her handbag, but her eyes find James's again without much instruction from her brain, and she can't help but offer an apologetic wince. "You don't mind, do you?"

"You carry on, I'll just sit here and maintain my Duolingo streak," James instructs her, waving them both away.

"What language are you learning?" says Bea.

"German."

"Urgh." Beatrice pulls a face. "Spanish is the one. You're wasting your time."

"Tell that to Angela Merkel when Brexit hits and we're begging the Germans to rescue our sorry souls."

"Learning a new language is a good thing," says Lily diplomatically, feeling like Ms. Frizzle all of a sudden. If only Lily Tomlin could magically appear and help her fix her life. Lily Tomlin seems like a woman who has it all together. "No matter what it is."

"Self-improvement. You get it," says James, and smiles up at her—a soft, resigned sort of smile that leaves Lily's heartstrings all tangled and twisted. "Die Frau, der Mann, der Junge und das Mädchen. Bitte. Tschüss. Ich liebe dich. See?" He taps the side of his head with one finger. "Learning."

"Right," Lily agrees, weakly mimicking his tap. "I'll go and get changed, and then—no, actually, wait."

She swoops down upon her desk—hopefully with some grace—and picks up the mug he'd set down only a few minutes ago, accidentally drowning baby Dudley in an errant spillage.

James made her tea. She can't just leave it to go cold, abandoned and unappreciated, lest he take it as a reflection of her feelings for him—feelings she wants him to understand as much as she doesn't. Her only option is to down the whole thing in one mouthful, which she does, throat bobbing...and promptly scalds the inside of her mouth.

The pained squeak she can't contain upon making contact with the hot liquid very likely gives this away.

Still, she carries on, chugging the whole thing through sheer force of will and trying to look cool about it. She can faintly discern from the taste that James made it exactly how she likes, but any potential enjoyment of the flavour is completely negated by what might be an urgent need to seek medical attention once she's done.

When she finally, _finally_ finishes the last excruciating drop and sets it down on her coaster with a heavy clunk, she sees that Beatrice and James are staring at her like she's scattered her every mental marble across the office floor.

"Did you just burn your mouth?" James asks.

"Yeah, she did," says Beatrice.

Lily shakes her head in lieu of a proper response, lips pressed tightly together. Her palate and her tongue are on fire, and fire needs oxygen to thrive.

"Are you sure?" He actually gets up from his chair, looking adorably concerned. "You sounded like R2-D2 just now."

"Why did you drink it all at once like that?" Beatrice looks as if she wants to start laughing. "It was still steaming."

With a shrug, Lily shucks her handbag strap onto her shoulder.

"You're so weird," Bea sighs.

"Do you want some water?" James offers.

"Don't give her water, you idiot, that'll make it worse."

"How will cold water make it _worse_ if she's burned her—"

"M'fine. I'm getting changed," Lily forces out, and turns her back on both of them to stalk inelegantly away. "And you're both dramatic. Bye."

"Fine, your ladyship," Bea calls after her. "I'll go and fetch you some ice."

Someone should print out an Office Maniac certificate for the awards ceremony later, Lily thinks, hellbent on the bathroom. She'd be an absolute cert.

But this is just who she is now—pining and sighing and forgetting herself, woman she barely recognises, priorities all askew. Stomach doing backflips. Anxious and jumpy and tailspinning. Hard.

That man has made a bloody mess of her head.

Her heart's an even bigger disaster.

 **June 5th, 2018, 2:16 p.m** **  
** **(day twenty-two)**

"I think you've spilled," James tells her in the break room.

Lily glances at him over the top of her phone before she looks down and, sure enough, spies a healthy dollop of pinkish-orange on the surface of the table.

"Bugger," she huffs, and sets her sandwich down.

"You and sauce don't exactly get along, do you?"

"Hah-hah," she says blandly.

Then she reminds herself that she's committed to being pleasant, not oversensitive, and offers a wry smile so that he can believe her response was dryly witty, rather than tellingly resentful.

Even if she finds it audacious of him to make a quip the expense of her dignity.

If he notices the undertone she's hastily tried to kick across the floor, James shows no sign of it. Instead he takes the seat directly across from her and plops his McDonald's bag on the table, casual as you like.

That's another audacious move. Lily might have smiled at him, but she didn't invite him to sit with her.

Then again, where else is he going to sit? The break room on the first floor isn't exactly a sprawling metropolis, and the only other table in the room is littered with the trash left behind by whatever uncivilised monsters had eaten lunch there and ignored their obligation to clean up after themselves.

Oversensitive, Evans. Oversensitive.

She's _got_ to stop looking for reasons to dislike him.

James usually goes for lunch with Remus and Social Media Sirius—he lives with the latter, she has recently learned—at noon, an hour before Lily leaves for hers, but they had a meeting with Dom that morning which ran very late. As a result, they've both wound up on lunch at the same time, which marks a first in their relatively short acquaintance.

Lily had initially suspected—hoped, really—that James might adopt Sirius's aversion to work and fondness for overlong breaks without fear of repercussions, simply because his daddy is the CEO, but he has never gone over his designated hour.

In fact, he's punctual to a tee.

And helpful, and intelligent, and performing his duties to a faultless, impeccable standard.

He also keeps roping her into bantery exchanges, mostly before she even knows they're happening.

She's annoyed about it.

Her annoyance is extremely unfair and she knows that, but Lily can't help but feel anxious about her own future at Sleekeazy now that he's back on the scene. James's job shouldn't even exist, technically, but was dreamed up by Fleamont. The CEO was so happy to have his son back at the company that he inserted him into Lily's team without considering such unimportant things as her thoughts on the matter, or the overhead costs of an employee that isn't needed.

Fleamont didn't even consult with Lily before he informed her of his decision, even though she's supposed to be in charge of new hires for her team. He just announced it in a meeting. _Bam. My son's coming back. I've tacked 'Assistant to the' in front of your job title and slapped it on his chest, as if that's anything but a thin cover. Be nice to him, won't you? He's the apple of my eye._

Lily hasn't been able to rest easy since, though she knows that her work has been excellent. James's reinstatement has thrown her into a whirlwind of imagined implications that play across her brain on near constant rotation, a never-ending playlist of a short list of songs she really doesn't like.

Perhaps Fleamont privately believes that Lily's lacking in an area James isn't, or perhaps he doesn't, but would happily lose one of his best employees if it means keeping his son on staff. Perhaps she's being edged out. Replaced. Perhaps it's all innocent, and Fleamont merely wanted to give his son a job, but it's only a matter of time before some bright spark in Finance reminds the CEO that he's paying two people to do the work of one, and nepotism will probably dictate that she gets the chop.

It's likely an irrational fear, but still, James could do with being a _little_ less capable.

In the meantime, she won't let him draw her into any witty tête-à-têtes, and concern herself only with the chipotle sauce dripping out of her sandwich.

Luckily, her chin is safe. Only the table has been hit this time.

"This is not my fault, you know," she tells him lightly, fishing a napkin from the absurdly long plastic bag her lunch had come in. "Sauce and I get along just fine. Blame Subway for this."

His dark eyebrows lift. "Subway spilled that sauce?"

"They might as well have," Lily explains as she mops up the mess. "The guy behind the counter completely ignored me when I asked him to add _just a little_ chipotle and doused the whole thing like it was on fire, or something, and _this,_ mind," she adds, with a quick shake of the napkin to emphasise her point, "was after I had to ask him to remake my sandwich because he just assumed I wanted cheese and tossed some on top, which he shouldn't do because not everyone wants cheese. _I_ don't want cheese, which is why I specifically said 'no cheese,' and look at the mess I'm in now."

"Those heartless bastards," says James, with just a touch of an amused smile as he lifts one hand to ruffle his hair.

He's always messing his hair up, she's noticed. It's as if he's afraid that it will start to flatten out if he leaves it to its own devices for anything longer than a twenty minute interval. It's vanity run amok, clearly. How shameless. How _audacious._

If he _is_ vain, said vanity is sadly justified, because he's...well.

She'd still like to sleep with him. That's miserably undeniable.

But the less she thinks about that, the better.

She shrugs instead, dropping the napkin. "Tell me about it."

"That'll sure teach me a lesson about trusting major corporations like Subway."

"You'd think they'd have our best interests at heart, wouldn't you?"

"I am shocked— _shocked—_ to think they could just be in it for the money."

"And I mean, yes, their turkey, bacon and guac wraps are delicious," Lily admits, "but god, at what cost?"

"About a fiver in hard cash, but I hear the emotional costs are in the thousands."

"I'll be seeking a cool million in damages," she intones, eyeing his McDonalds's bag with some interest. "Speaking of untrustworthy corporations, what have you got for lunch?"

He reaches into the bag and withdraws a large box. "Chicken nuggets."

"Really?"

"Yup. Being unhealthy today."

"I love nuggets," she enthuses, and lets out a pathetic, longing moan, finding all of a sudden that her chicken salad sub is woefully inadequate in comparison. "You've definitely won lunch."

"Didn't know we were competing."

"It's just a figure of speech."

"Fair enough," he says, popping open the lid. "Do you want some?"

"Some of your nuggets?"

"No, some of my sage advice," he says, and tosses the box between them with a whispery laugh. "Yes, my nuggets. Never take my advice."

"Oh." She blinks at him. "No, it's fine, I couldn't—"

"No, really, you can."

"It's _your_ lunch—"

"It's a share box," says James flatly, "which means that more than one person is required to make proper use of it." He points at her. "One." Then he swings his finger back to poke his own chest. "Two. We've met the minimum requirement. Now you _have_ to eat some."

Her gaze settles on his finger, prodding a well in the breast pocket of his shirt—today's colour is a bold Valentine red which works in glorious harmony with his skin and his jet black hair—before sliding down to the nuggets.

 _What's his angle?_ she wonders, an unbidden question swimming in the forefront of her mind.

 _This is ridiculous,_ a stronger voice points out. She's being paranoid. His every trivial action does not bear a scrutiny this intense, only the things that matter, and he's hardly laced the nuggets with arsenic.

"Are you trying to fatten me up?" she asks him, which is such a trite, bog-standard, subpar retort that she wants to take off one of her heels and hit herself in the head with it, but no amount of battering with a red court shoe can erase the words from the atmosphere, and Lily's not sure if the response she wants is one she can take to HR or to the privacy of her bedroom.

Definitely HR.

"Yes," he immediately returns. "I'm the witch from Hansel and Gretel. Can't believe you foiled me."

She can't bite back her laughter, and in response she's treated to a pleased, boyish smile, which feels rather like she's let him sneak a goal into the back of her net while she wasn't paying attention.

Imagine taking _that_ to HR. _Help, he made me laugh, open his throat at once, and make his mother watch._

"The witch from Hansel and Gretel had a house made of sweets," she informs him. "You have twenty chicken nuggets. Lazy effort."

"Nineteen," James corrects her, fishing one out of the box. "What can I say? The economy has changed since the 19th century."

"We've had at least a couple of recessions, I suppose."

"Not to mention the sugar tax. I'm making do with limited resources."

"Hashtag millionaire cannibal problems."

He grins at her, and a smile attempts to tug at Lily's lips, and it feels too much like an easy, chummy moment.

He's got her again with the bantering, but she's supposed to be making an effort to avoid that.

"Before I forget," she briskly begins, twisting the wheel in the opposite direction, disrupting the natural flow of their chat, "the Düsseldorf office have started using Wire Pro to run their web conferences, so I need you to speak to IT about having any necessary software installed on our laptops."

"I'm on it," he says, and nudges the box towards her with his knuckle. "Have a nugget, Gretel."

"Alright," she agrees, and has five.

The nosedive begins, she will later reflect, in that hour. At that table. There.

Right there.


	2. a bit later on

**part two: a bit later on** **  
** **(or, how it all got better, and simultaneously worse)**

 **June 22nd, 2018, 4:31 p.m.** **  
** **(day forty)**

It's Eliza Macdonald's 24th birthday, and Lily throws her a little in-office soirée because Eliza—when she's good, Betty when she's naughty, Lizzie when she's especially delicious and Elizabeth only when Lily wants to send her into a sulk—has always been a fan of having a fuss made in her name, no matter what name she happens to be sporting.

Eliza is also a fan of decadent chocolate goodies, so Lily makes sure to provide both when the birthday girl is kind enough to come to work on her big day, rather than fake an illness of some kind, which isn't entirely beneath her. She's thrilled when Lily allows the team to wind down an hour early with cake, snacks, and a few cheeky bottles of prosecco.

It's nice for Lily, watching her team celebrate above the low red partition which separates her and James from the rest of them, listening to them laugh and chatter and munch mini pretzels, their plastic champagne flutes well filled with the best M&S could offer. She's too busy to join the merriment herself, but she has a little plate of goodies by her keyboard and it's more than enough for her that everybody else is having fun.

James is parked quite firmly beside her, his own slice of cake untouched, reading through a supplier's business pitch with a little crease between his eyebrows.

He naturally seems to sit with his chair swivelled slightly in her direction, and so Lily has become quite familiar with that crease over the weeks, not to mention the slope of his nose, and the sharp line of his jaw, and the pleasing shape of his hairline. She often finds herself picking out little bits of James to consider, like his top lip, which is slightly bigger than the bottom, or the little dimple in his left cheek when he smiles. He doesn't have one on the right side.

Little bits at a time, but never the whole picture. The whole picture can be a little overwhelming.

Lily's sort of charmed by that little crease.

She also sort of wishes he'd remove it from her sight.

James seems to have fashioned an entirely silent, eerily psychic sense for what she needs from him, day-to-day, moment-to-moment. If she's working, he's working. If she stays in the office to carry on working after hours, he's right there with her, and never utters one word of complaint. It makes him an excellent assistant, except her job used to be his job until he had to accept a demotion to return, and that...makes him even better, perhaps?

It might make her situation worse.

He's been back at Sleekeazy for five weeks and four days. She's been counting.

Counting, and waiting with bated breath for a glimmer of dissension in the ranks, some quip or jibe or comment, any kind of sign that he—man, progeny, one-time holder of the title Lily now claims—has zero intention of working beneath her for very long, that he's not a team player, that he's returned to the company with every intention of taking his old job back.

In the weeks before they first met, Lily had prepared a strategy of quasi-aggressive friendliness for that very reason. It was her calculated resolve to kill him with kindness, thereby shaming him out of any jealousy or hostility he might have been feeling towards her.

The problem is, she hasn't noticed anything of the sort.

James has been unerringly friendly back.

Minus the aggression.

He's much nicer to her than she is to him, undoubtedly. She's not doing very well with her plan, keeps slipping when she gets flustered. Sometimes she'll respond to one of his emails with brusque language that she didn't intend to use. She'll find herself changing the topic of conversation when she starts to enjoy his quips and jokes too much. She swallows irritated sighs when Fleamont gushes about how rapidly James has improved since he came back, and asks her if she agrees that he's a real asset to the team.

Also, not that it's relevant, but the top two buttons of his shirt are usually yanked undone by midday, and Lily has found herself gazing at the hollow of his throat—imagining what it would feel like if he tore open her blouse and took her roughly against the copy machine—more times than she can count. That's a rather complicated avenue of her already-complicated thoughts on James Potter that is best left untraversed.

So she leaves it alone.

Mostly.

(She can't control her dreams. That one's not on her.)

"Maxine Anders just pinged me on Skype to say Guido wants to know if I've considered the points in the email he sent me last night," she informs him presently, scrolling up and down through her Outlook inbox in an effort to locate it. "But I can't see it at all. Did you put it in a folder?"

He immediately lets out an irritated huff and minimises the document he's reading to open his own Outlook client.

"You can't see it because he sent it to _me_ last night," he tells her, scowling at his monitor. "Idiot. If he'd ever bother checking his own inbox instead of waiting for Maxine to do it with half the information, he'd see that I replied two hours ago."

"What was it about?"

"Just another push for us to go with Hebold instead of B3," says James. He's already typing up a second—no doubt firmly worded—email to send on to Guido, his fingers flying across the stylishly-backlit keys at a rapid pace. His keyboard lights are red. Lily's are a hot pink. "It wasn't worth your time, I've already told him to bugger off."

"You know his wife's a procurement manager at Hebold, don't you?"

James snorts. "Bet _she_ works on commission."

"He's such a twat," says Lily sullenly, "and he _always_ does this—contacts me through somebody else, like Maxine, then his feelings are deeply hurt when I don't immediately respond. As if I'm supposed to know when he won't speak to me directly."

"He's too afraid of you to speak to you directly."

"Afraid of _me?"_ Lily looks at James incredulously. "Why? Since when?"

"I've known Guido for years. He's afraid of you. Trust me," says James, still typing away. "He's the same way with Bee."

"New York Bee or downstairs Bea?"

"Buzzy Bee. New York Bee." James pauses in what he's doing, glances over at her. "Actually, no—both of them. If you're a woman and you don't take shit from people, Guido's afraid of you."

Lily feels That Thing again.

It's the tugging warmth in her chest, the heady blood-rush, another of those pesky bursts of unwanted fondness that make it so bloody hard for her to settle on one feeling or another. It will be utterly shit if he winds up taking her job from under her nose, but if he doesn't, if her thrumming paranoia is entirely baseless…

God. That might somehow be worse.

Part of Lily really wants to ask him for the truth, straight out, all cards on the table. Is there something she hasn't been told? Is her job at risk? Has she watched too much Jane the Virgin and is now cursed to believe that everything in life must ascend to telenovela levels of drama and betrayal? There isn't any point in asking him questions, truth be told. If she really is being phased out, James isn't going to be honest. If she isn't, she'll just make herself look nuts in front of him and his father. Neither option seems ideal.

"Huh," she instead replies. "Gutless Guido."

James laughs, which makes her feel as if she's won something, and Eliza marches up to their desks with her prosecco in hand. She leans over the partition to fix Lily with a dry smile.

"You coming to play with us yet?" Eliza asks them both, cracking a piece of gum in her mouth.

"I can't," says Lily. "I've got too much to do."

"But it's my birthday."

"I know, you ungrateful brat. I got you cake and wine."

"But I'm your favourite."

"I don't have favourites at work."

"I know you have to say that to be fair to the others"—She flips her chestnut brown hair over her shoulder and quirks an eyebrow—"but we both know that it's me, yeah?"

"Betty," Lily warns. "Don't make me tattle to your sister."

"Killjoy," Eliza accuses. "She always threatens to tattle to Mary," she adds, apparently for James's benefit. "Did you know that my big sister is one of her best mates?"

"I did not," says James, and goes as far as to nudge his keyboard away and lean upon his elbows to survey Eliza with interest. Either he's a commendable actor, or this minor nugget of information is genuinely fascinating to him. "She tells me nothing."

"So she hasn't told you that she used to run around our back garden in her jean shorts, pretending to be Misty?"

"Misty?"

"From Pokémons."

"Poké _mon,"_ Lily corrects her, but regrets it immediately. James twists his chair towards her at once, brows shooting towards his hairline. "I had the hair for it," she explains to him. "Sort of. Mine's a darker red."

"She even had her mum buy her those red strappy things." Eliza mimes snapping at a pair of braces. "And what did you name your fish?"

Lily could kick her right in the vagina. "Goldeen."

"Goldeen!" Eliza cries, gesturing dramatically. Her wine sloshes sloppily in its plastic home. "Goldeen died _tragically_ young. It's a very sad story," she informs James, adopting a sombre expression. "Petunia flushed her down the loo when Lily was—"

"Who's Petun—"

"I know you think you're embarrassing me," says Lily flatly, levelling a smirking Eliza with a hard look, "and I resent you for trying after I've just bought you a chocolate truffle cake, but I'm not embarrassed. Lots of people my age like Pokémon, even now. There's no shame in it."

"Yeah," James agrees. "I love it. Got all the games."

"See?" Lily gestures towards him with both hands, palms facing the ceiling like she's directing Eliza's attention to a shiny new car on a gameshow. "Potter loves it."

"Yeah, 'cause Potter's a dork—"

"Cheers."

"Don't be salty and come play with us," Eliza implores, making her bright blue eyes go as wide as they can go without popping out of their sockets. "Please?"

"I have work to do," says Lily. "I'll play at Mary's later."

Eliza makes a big show of sighing in annoyance, but quickly skitters off to accost Kingsley—who has whipped out his phone and is cycling through his Taylor Swift Spotify playlist on a very low volume, so as not to disturb Digital Marketing, their nearest neighbours—and shimmy onto his desk for a chat.

"She used to be sweet before her sister's hard-nosed sarcasm rubbed off on her," Lily sighs. "Now she's a menace."

"A menace with a lot of dirt on her boss," James replies, then he laughs, quick and quiet. "I can't _believe_ you liked Pokémon."

Lily feels herself bristle. "Well, I was a child, so—"

"I wasn't teasing you or anything, I think it's really cool," he cuts over her, looking mildly alarmed, his hand lifting to tangle in his dark hair. "I wanted to be like Ash when I was little—I mean, not exactly, because I was a massive mummy's boy and wouldn't have survived five minutes in the wild, but on a molecular level, I definitely wanted to be the best." He nods. "Like no one ever was."

Lily shrugs weakly, rather than allow herself to be utterly charmed by this. "You've got the hair for it, I suppose."

"Exactly. Like you." He rewards her with a wide grin. "Who's your favourite? Pokémon, I mean."

 _Vulpix. Not Ninetails. Ninetails is too showy._ "Can't really remember."

"Mine is Jigglypuff."

"The singing one?"

"She doesn't get enough sympathy," he says at once, without a hint of irony. "Even though she was cursed with an affliction that nobody took seriously, forced to travel from place to place in the hopes of finding that one person who could give her the applause she craved, and never found it. That shit is dark." He presses a fist to his chest as if in remembrance for a fallen comrade. "Plus, where'd she keep that felt tip pen? Do you remember the Pokérap?"

Lily can recite the Pokérap with her eyes closed. _Zubat, Primeape, Meowth, Onix. Geodude, Rapidash, Magneton, Snorlax._

"Vaguely, I think? I remember that Brock was really into a lot of different girls."

"Officer Jenny and Nurse Joy."

"Was that their names?" The amount of lies she's telling is really quite despicable. "It's been a really long time, so I don't remember most of it." She swivels her chair from side to side, scrolling aimlessly through her Skype conversation with Maxine. "Sorry."

The slight surge of satisfaction that she'd hoped would come with denying him a thing he wants is nowhere to be found.

Why is she lying? The information he wants is of no consequence. How could he possibly use it to hurt her?

"Yeah," says James softly, but if he feels at all deflated by her lack of enthusiasm for a topic which so clearly enthrals him, he hides it tremendously well. "Sorry for spewing all of that at you."

"It's fine, not your fault that I can't remember."

"Was it Eliza who told you about this job when I quit, then?"

The change in topic prompts her to look at him properly, and her heart gives a funny little skip as it occurs to her that she's looking directly into his eyes, which are a warm and rather uncommon shade of hazel.

"Yup," she says, turning her attention back to Skype.

"Where were you working before?"

"Abbott & Fish."

"They've got a place in Hammersmith, right?"

She nods.

"What were you doing there?"

"Same as this," she says. "Just a step down."

"Did you enjoy it?"

"I did, it was great there," she lies. "The people were really nice, too, which is all you can ask for." That might be the biggest lie she's ever bloody told, but if she tells him the truth he'll probably assume that she's exaggerating her experience for sympathy, and Lily doesn't want that. Not ever. She can't be a target of pity _and_ a woman in the workplace, especially not if a man is the person aiming the arrow. "But I don't really like talking about old jobs at work," she adds. Another lie. She's discussed her old job at length with Katie and Eliza. "So, y'know, we should get back to work."

"Oh," says James.

"Sorry," she offers weakly.

"It's alright," he says, his gaze drifting down to his desk. He's frowning now. "So, er, should I sort this out with Guido or do you want to email him yourself?"

"Oh, you might as well, you're already halfway through the email."

"Sure," he says, and pulls his keyboard back to his chest in a quick, jerking motion, and Lily feels as if she's made a misstep in the dark. "I'll get on that right away."

 **March 8th, 2019, 1:13 p.m.** **  
** **(day two hundred and ninety-nine)**

The restaurant that Sleekeazy has rented for the party is Fleamont's favourite Mexican place, just a minute down the road from the office, and everyone ambles down there in dribs and drabs and groups of odd numbers. Several people are already rather drunk from the morning—most prominently Sirius and Euphemia, James's mother—but Lily has had nothing but a lukewarm bottle of water since she scurried off to change her dress and hide from her assistant like the snivelling coward she is.

Not that hiding is easy when your best friend can be heard by all within a two-hundred yard radius, but Lily has done a pretty good job of avoiding James, Beatrice’s bawdy bellowing notwithstanding. She and Bea are among the first to walk into the restaurant's colourful, brightly lit function room, and they manage to nab an empty table while their colleagues file in.

In a tragic twist of fate, they're quickly joined by all of the lads from IT, who seem to view Bea's presence at the table as an open invitation, then the last available spot is nabbed by Claire Danes. She arrives right after the wait staff have presented all of the tables with complimentary chips and guac, tripping tipsily into the chair beside Lily's while Bea is deflecting Brags-About-His-Bowel-Movements Lee's latest painful attempt at flirting, and immerses the immediate area in a cloud of fragrant perfume.

Claire Danes is forever full of bounce, and very, very pretty.

Claire Danes is not, however, the actress of Romeo + Juliet fame, but sharing a name with the woman has granted her a sort of infamy in the office. She is almost universally referred to as Claire Danes, never plain old Claire, like an opposite Madonna, and she generally seems quite pleased about it.

"Hiya!" she cries, with a merry lilt in her voice on the last syllable. She drops her handbag on the table, cocktail already in hand, and smiles brightly at Lily. "Alright if I sit here?"

"Oh, sure," Lily agrees, though it's needless. Claire has already taken the seat. "Go right ahead."

"I saw you surrounded by these idiots and thought I'd help balance the scale," she murmurs in Lily's ear, then lets out a low laugh. "You look fantastic, by the way."

"Oh, thank you, so do you."

"Can't believe Mrs. P hasn't roped you in as a hair model yet."

"Oh, she’s tried." On several occasions, in fact. Euphemia Potter is a rod of cast-iron will wrapped up in a glamorous, manicured package. She nods her head at Claire's shimmery black slip dress. "I love what you're wearing."

"I love what _you're_ wearing." Claire produces a tube of chapstick from her handbag. "Is it new?"

Lily drops her gaze down to her lap, lightly fingers the soft purple fabric and tries her best to pretend that she's _not_ thinking about the time James said that purple was an especially good colour on her, because that's _not_ why she bought this dress.

"Yeah," she says. "Saw it on Asos and put it in my basket before I looked at the price so I couldn't talk myself out of it. What about yours?"

"Oh, I got it in Zara last weekend," says Claire. She pauses for a moment to apply the strawberry-flavoured balm, and when she's done, she smacks her lips together before continuing. "I was going to buy this gorgeous playsuit instead, but we're going to be drinking a lot and they're so hard to pee in—"

Then James walks into the room with Remus, and Claire Danes is immediately tuned out.

And Lily does not want to tune Claire out. She _likes_ Claire. They follow one another on Instagram and Claire comments on most of her pictures with heart-eyes emojis. They share a deep fondness for the Antiques Roadshow and have vague plans to attend one together. Based on that, they've got to be at least two or three steps into a friendship.

But then, it's James, who does this stupid thing where he sucks up all of her attention like she's water and he's the roots of a thirsty plant, shamelessly leaving nothing for all the other hopeful flowers.

He sees her almost immediately, catching her eye when Remus moves a little to the right, and Lily is forced to send him an airy wave. His brows shoot up as he takes in the IT boys who have crowded the table, and Lily knows exactly what he's thinking—shame on her, surrounding herself on all sides by people who aren't him.

She gestures to the others at the table to indicate that he could have sat closer if he'd gotten here earlier, but he shakes his head as if bitterly disappointed, barely suppressing an amused smile, and follows Remus to a table on the other side of the room.

"What's his deal?" says Claire Danes.

Lily takes a fraction longer than she should to tear her eyes away from James, but somehow manages it, blinking. "What?"

"What's his deal?"

"Who?"

Claire Danes laughs almost pityingly. "Potter, obviously."

It's fortunate for Lily that Bowel-Movements Lee and Proud-Chauvinist Greg choose that very moment to launch into a lairy rendition of La Cucaracha—despite not knowing the words, and despite the fact that the atmospheric mariachi music they are singing along to is most certainly _not_ La Cucaracha—because her brain undertakes a wild somersault for about three seconds and she's quite unable to think of a response. The terrible singing provides a useful and necessary distraction to Claire, who scrunches up her nose in disgust.

"What?" she says, once she's booted up again. "Kid Legacy over there?" She glances over at James's table, but this time takes care not to let her eyes linger. "What do you mean, his deal?"

"He's your assistant, yeah?"

 _No, he's my fucking husband,_ she wants to snarl, wondering why she _ever_ thought that she could like Claire Danes enough to go looking at antiques with her, because there's something in the way Claire has perked up in her seat, and the glint in her eyes, and the sudden purr that has curled its way into her speech, that spells "DANGER AHEAD" in flashing neon letters.

But Lily can't say that. It's possessive and distinctly threatening.

Also, not that it matters, James is _not her husband._

"Yeah," she says instead. "He's a very good assistant."

"Fuck that, he's gorgeous," Claire Danes slyly intones, grinning over the top of her glass. "He can assist me whenever he wants."

This is fine.

Fine.

Lily can handle this without making a scene. All she needs to do is grab Claire Danes by the back of her elegant, lilac-dyed chignon and slam her face-first into the guacamole. _Then_ she won't be so bloody smug.

She may be spiralling a little.

Claire Danes knows not what she does, of course. It's not as if she knows how Lily feels about James. It's not as if she's deliberately trying to upset her. Claire Danes does not deserve to have her head slammed into the guacamole. Nor does the guacamole deserve her head. Nor does Lily deserve to find herself bereft of guacamole. She loves guacamole.

And James.

Is not.

Her husband.

Not her boyfriend. Not her lover. Not even her friend. Not her anything at all.

"I hadn't really thought about it," she bluffs.

"D'you know if he has a girlfriend?"

 _No, you homewrecking shitcanoe, he has a wife. I'm his wife. ME._ "I don't think so?"

"Good." Claire Danes sighs longingly and lifts her neon yellow straw to her lips, staring at James's back in such a predatory way that Lily immediately begins to rethink the guacamole. "I love him."

In Lily's imagination, the guacamole bowl has exploded all over the table.

In reality, she can feel a slight pulse throbbing in her eyelid.

"Did you just say you _love_ him?" she asks Claire, trying and failing to sound human, though she hopes it translates as amused disbelief. She tacks a laugh on at the end, though it likely doesn't help. "Like, romantically?"

Claire bobs her head as she sips her cocktail. "Mmhmm."

"No you don't," says Lily at once.

The straw flops uselessly out of the corner of Claire Danes's mouth and spills a droplet of her drink on her glossy lower lip, which she licks off, frowning.

"'Scuse me?" she says.

"You can't love someone you barely know, it doesn't work like that," Lily explains. She can hear the hardness in her own voice, the resentment, and she'd very much like to drop it if she could, but it certainly seems determined to stay there. "That'd be like me...saying I loved Peter from Maintenance," she adds, gesturing towards Peter, who is sitting a few chairs away from James at his table, "when I've only spoken to him two or three times in my life."

"Nobody could love Peter from Maintenance," says Claire.

"Don't be a bitch, Carrie Mathison. I'm sure _somebody_ does," says Beatrice, from Lily's other side, suddenly inserting herself into the conversation. "And anyway, you can't go after Potter. He and Lily are kind of a thing."

This statement is so out of the blue, considering Bea's abrupt decision to weigh in, and made with such flat, matter-of-fact conviction that Lily—who has never, not once, offered Beatrice even the slightest indication of what her feelings for James might entail—is astonished enough to turn and gape at her openly, her body flooded with heat.

"We are _not,"_ she emphatically, dishonestly objects.

Bea squints suspiciously at her. "But you kind of are."

"Since when?"

"Since the year dot."

"Are you serious, is she serious?" says Claire, leaning forward to see Beatrice past Lily. Her forgotten straw is sliding higher and higher up in her glass, tipping precariously over the rim.

"Yes," says Beatrice firmly.

"No," says Lily, less firmly.

"And unless you value getting your flap smashed more than you care about your female friendships," Bea coldly continues, "you should keep your greedy mitts off—"

"Stop that!" Lily chides, elbowing her in the side.

She twists quickly in her chair and offers Claire Danes an apologetic smile, as if she wasn't mentally bashing the woman's pretty, poreless face into a condiment not a minute ago.

"I'm so sorry about that," she offers, throwing in another painfully fake laugh. "I don't know what—"

"No, I'm sorry." Claire sets her drink on the table and lifts a placating hand. "I honestly didn't know that you even _liked—"_

"I don't, it's not, I mean I _do_ but she's just—"

"I mean, you never said anything so—"

"Yeah, no, because it's _so_ not a big deal."

"Honestly," Claire's hand has turned inwards and is resting on her heart. "If I'd had any idea, I wouldn't have said a thing, I would have—"

"Doubtful," says Bea loudly, and Lily whips around again to glare at her. She's poking her cuticles with the tip of her fingernail. "Very doubtful."

 _"Beatrice,"_ Lily hisses.

"You know, I think I'm just gonna pop to the loo," says Claire quickly. There's a scraping sound as she pushes her chair back to get up, and she's slid out of her chair by the time Lily turns back to look at her. She slings her handbag strap onto her arm as she straightens up, eyeing Beatrice like she's just witnessed a car crash. "Keep an eye on my drink, yeah?"

"Yeah, 'course I will," says Lily helplessly, and Claire Danes stalks away, heading in the direction of the bathrooms, though if she reappears at the table with a policeman by her side and has them both arrested for harassment, it will not be one bit surprising.

The second she's out of earshot, Lily rounds on Beatrice.

"Why did you even _say_ that shit to her?" she demands of her friend, her face flushed and burning. "It was so rude! There wasn't any need for it!"

"Because." Bea shrugs, unaffected by her best friend's blatant indignation. "I don't trust her."

"Why not?"

"Because she definitely knows you fancy Potter—"

"How could she _possibly—"_

"And she's playing some sick, territorial game with you because of it," Beatrice finishes, then makes a big show of rolling her light brown eyes before she reaches for the tortilla chips. _"Everyone_ knows you fancy Potter, you beautiful twerp. You're both crazy obvious, and _believe_ me"—she scoops a generous helping of guacamole onto a chip and points it in the direction of the toilets—"you need to watch out for that one."

Lily can't think of any response which does not further implicate her in the crime of being helplessly in love with her own assistant, and she's not particularly revved to hear Beatrice hand down her guilty verdict, so she picks up a tortilla chip with unnecessary vigour, jabs it into the guacamole and slumps miserably backwards in her chair to consume it.

"Drama," Bea mutters.

"Shut up."

"You shut up."

"Carrie Mathison's not exactly an insult, you know," Lily moodily points out. "If you'd ever watched Homeland, you'd know that."

"Hard disagree," says Beatrice calmly. "Anything's an insult if I say it is."

 **July 4th, 2018, 6:31 p.m.** **  
** **(day fifty-two)**

James Potter knows how to make himself useful.

He sorts through Lily's email backlogs and flags things that need her personal attention, responding to the rest himself, as well as fielding the emails that colleagues from across the company flood into his inbox. He has stood in for her on several conference calls without requiring any babysitting. He has a knack for haggling effectively with suppliers, sacrificed his weekend to attend a trade show with Kingsley when Lily was struck down by a stomach bug, and convinced the lads in IT to upgrade the team's laptops, nabbing Lily a larger and fancier monitor in the process.

He's also really, really beautiful, but that's neither here nor there.

In the space of a meagre seven weeks, he has lightened Lily's workload to such an extent that she often gets to leave the office when she's supposed to clock out. Some evenings, she doesn't even boot up her work laptop at all when she gets home.

It's a rather novel sensation, having the disposable time of a normal human being, and Lily finds herself, in private moments—such as when she's enjoying the evening sun on her mum's terrace with a glass of good wine, rather than making her fifth desperate attempt to get in touch with Pointless Patricia in the New York office because Brilliant Bee is on vacation and nobody else there has a clue what they're doing—quietly admitting that she likes being normal.

James listens to her. Intently, it seems. He doesn't talk over her in discussions. He asked her to approve his annual leave before he went ahead and booked it. Eliza and Kingsley worked under James when he was head of UK Product Development and they've both—with no ill intent, rather a silly lack of forethought—consulted with him on matters that they should have brought to Lily first, so James merely directed them to her. No takeovers attempted.

He's slowly becoming invaluable, and Lily gave up on trying to dislike him some time ago.

Instead, she's tried to settle upon a stance of cool indifference, but that's difficult to maintain because he's funny and cheerful and charming. He asks her questions about herself and seems genuinely interested in knowing the answers, reluctant as Lily is to give them. The whole team is nuts about him.

But despite this—no, _because_ of this—Lily can't help but worry that the better he is, the more likely it will be that his father will eventually see fit to edge her out.

The easier her working life becomes, the higher her anxiety reaches, and James is entirely to blame.

And then there's the other problem.

It's a problem that confronts her on a Wednesday evening, after the rest of her team have left for the night. It's just her and James on the office floor, going over a concept and prototype report for a proposed new children's shampoo that needs to be perfected by Friday, but Lily's brain has numbed to the point where sentences no longer have meaning and James is just...sitting there.

Two feet away from her.

Their desks kiss, their monitors stand a couple of inches apart, and she likes the way his face looks in profile.

She's got nothing better to look at.

Or think about.

In the seven weeks and two days which have passed since the day they met, Lily has compiled a list of questions that she's itching in her bones to ask him, curiosities she's acquired, details of his life that she's found herself hungry to learn. There's a whole world inside him—a childhood, a favourite meal, scraped knees and schoolboy crushes and little acts of mischief, the smells he likes, the sounds he doesn't, old heartbreaks, new interests, his best memory and his worst one—tucked away inside the intricate spools of his brain, imprinted on his skin, tattooed across his organs, and she's intrigued by it.

She's irritated by it.

She's never stopped to consider another person in such intergalactic terms, where every shadowy nook and cranny is as noteworthy as a newly discovered star. She's never felt this eager just to know somebody, nor so at a loss to figure out how to get started because they got off on the wrong foot—or more accurately, Lily did, and she's not quite sure if James has noticed. She feels like a girl with a crush and a crone with a grudge all at once.

He just...he just _fascinates_ her.

Hello, other problem.

And here's the thing about spending upwards of eight hours a day sitting next to a fit, funny, fascinating person—Lily often finds herself gazing at him as she contemplates her confusing, conflicting compulsions.

In this case, she doesn't even realise that she's doing it until James does. He's leaning back in his chair and rubbing at his eyes behind his glasses, eliciting groans which imply that his muscles are slowly beginning to wake, then he drops his hand abruptly and snaps his gaze upon hers.

Her heart twangs like a plucked guitar string and her head whips back to face her monitor, seeking out the blurred, nonsensical hieroglyphics which earlier had resembled the English language (at least she's almost certain they resembled the English language, she's had a very tiring day). A furious heat is sweeping into her cheeks.

"Alright, Evans?" says James lightly.

"Mmhmm."

"Tough day, wasn't it?"

"It was," she agrees, staring fixedly at the word "necessary" and wondering if she's made a typo.

Is it one c or two? One s? She always second-guesses, and easily gets it wrong one time in three.

If she was even the one who wrote it this time around. Maybe it was him. They've been sharing the document, and she can't recall who was working on what with any clarity at present.

In her periphery, she sees him stretch his long arms high above his head.

Christ, she's been such an idiot, gawking at him like a horny teenager. No wonder she feels like she can't act normal in his presence. She's been a jumbled hodgepodge of simmering resentment and sexual frustration since the day he started.

"What are you doing after?" he asks.

She highlights the word and tentatively jabs the backspace key, only to immediately hit Ctrl and Z. It is one c. She was right the first time. "After what?"

"After work."

"Nothing," she says quickly, alarmed to find her heart twanging, again. "Why do _you_ want to know?"

Immediately, Lily realises that her emphasis on the word you, totally unsubtle, entirely unintended, born out of a sudden, panicked flurry of her imagination—in which he casually asks her to go for a coffee and the next thing she knows they're stumbling into her flat with their shirts half-off while she reaches down to unzip his trousers—is a mistake that she is bound to regret for at least the next several years.

What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck WHY would she say that?

"I was just asking to ask," James replies. He drops his arms and snaps his body upwards, suddenly straight-backed and alert, and pulls his chair closer to his desk with his feet. "No need to sound so suspicious."

His voice is light, but when Lily chances a proper glance at his face—because who is she kidding?—his mouth has pulled itself to one side and his narrowed eyes are fixed determinedly on his monitor as he clacks away at his keyboard.

His contented lethargy of moments ago is merely a whisper on the wind.

And he's chewing on the inside of his cheek.

She's annoyed him.

Great. That's just what this working relationship needs, another complex layer of bullshittery. Never mind that she's worried he'll hoof her out of a job. Never mind that she's slowly becoming obsessed with him. Why not make him hate her, too?

"Sorry," she blurts out, with an apologetic wince that he doesn't care to notice. "I didn't mean to make it sound like I thought you were planning to, y'know, follow me home or—"

"S'fine."

"It's just been a long day, I think. It felt really long," she continues to babble. "I don't even know why I said I was doing nothing, you know. I'm going to the gym after." She nudges the backpack that slumps beside her chair with her toe, glancing sideways at him. "Swimming pool. Got the membership through here, actually. Gym flex scheme. I mostly use it for discounts at the spa like a lazy wanker, but I like swimming in the summer."

James nods briefly, scrolling through the document like he's never seen anything so fascinating. "Cool."

"What are you doing after work?"

"Playing football with Sirius."

"Catching the sun while it lasts, yeah?"

He shrugs. "Yeah."

One-syllable answers. Great.

He hates her now, clearly. Layer unlocked.

And the worst part of it all? James is entirely within his rights to hate her, to write her off as a lost cause and answer her non-work-related questions in monosyllabic grunts. He has been trying so much harder than Lily to establish some kind of camaraderie, to engage her, to be nice to her, meanwhile she has devolved from politely evasive to downright rude, and all because she's simply too obnoxious to get a handle on her conflicting ideas and emotions.

She has to make it up to him. Somehow. With words. Lily was good with words, seven weeks and three days ago. Knew how to wield them to great effect. She can learn to do that again.

"You've got a cat," she says loudly.

Considering this is a last ditch effort before she slams her head down on her desk and calls it a night, "you've got a cat" is really not the best she could have done.

Though it does, at least, divert James's attention from his computer.

Sadly, the look he gives her is one of mildly annoyed confusion, rather than the pleased, intrigued brow lift she was hoping for.

"What?" he replies.

"Sorry. It's just—your cat." Lily gestures to the numerous photos which James has pinned to the partition behind his monitor. Most of the snaps feature a plump, fluffy, decidedly ginger puss with bright green eyes. "I love cats, you know. My parents don't, they're more into dogs, but the Ancient Egyptians worshipped cats, and anything that was good enough for Cleopatra is good enough for me."

His brows lower. "Cleopatra?"

"Yeah," she says. "I mean, not _anything,_ obviously. I'd never have my sister murdered, tempting as it is. But cats are great."

"Cleopatra had her sister murdered?"

"And a brother, who she poisoned, allegedly. It's all rumour and speculation, really. You know how those Ancient Egyptians were, always with the covert poisonings."

"Right," he says blankly, and though he's staring at Lily as if he's never in his life met with a more baffling conundrum, the corners of his gorgeous mouth lift into a faint smile as he adds, "yeah, course I do. Their dinner parties must have been a riot."

"I know, right?" She laughs. It miraculously doesn't sound nervous and desperate. "I imagine they'd have considered it quite dull if someone _didn't_ keel over and die in the middle of a meal."

"Nothing ruins your evening milk and honey quite like watching someone faceplant into their dessert."

"But then again, nothing could be more entertaining than trying to figure out the killer's identity with all of your mates."

"The eternal struggle," says James, wearing more than just a hint of a smile as he reaches to pluck a photograph from the partition. "His name is Algernon. My cat, I mean. Not like the mouse in the story," he adds quickly. "I'm always asked about the mouse in the story."

"Can I see?"

He hands over the photo. "Sure."

Bless Algernon, she thinks, smiling down at the picture of James hugging his disgruntled-looking cat to his chest, a proud smile stretched across his handsome face. This ferocious feline has unknowingly facilitated a melting of the ice, and Lily silently resolves to buy him some treats when she's next out shopping for groceries.

"He's very handsome," she remarks.

"He's a grumpy, vengeful little tyrant," says James darkly. "But very handsome, yes."

"Did you know that there's an Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest?"

"That's the play with the baby in the handbag, isn't it?"

"Among other things," she agrees as she hands back the photo. "That Algernon is a self-indulgent, completely amoral cad and an absolute con artist, but he's brilliantly witty and charming," she adds, offering him a sheepish smile, "so it all balances out."

James smiles back and leans forward in his chair, balancing his arms on top of his thighs. He has somehow, stealthily, turned his chair to orient his body towards hers completely as they've been talking. "You like witty and charming, then?"

"I do."

"And you like that play?"

"I _really_ do," she warmly enthuses, feeling sparkly.

"Cats, Cleopatra, and Oscar Wilde," says James thoughtfully, then sits back up. He looks mightily pleased about something, like he's just been proved right after a lengthy and impassioned debate—she's watched him wrangle like that with Sirius on more than one occasion. "Three things I learned about Lily Evans today."

"Come back tomorrow for more fun facts!" she softly trills, with a poor imitation of jazz hands. "Or you could tell me three. That seems fair."

"It does," he agrees. "I promise to think of some good ones and delight you with them tomorrow, but first"—he swings his chair back around, gives his mouse a little shake and jogs his monitor back to life—"I need to play football, and you need to swim."

"Oh, my gym's open late," Lily explains, watching him close down the various documents and spreadsheets he's pulled up on his laptop. "I can stay for a bit and finish—"

"I've been watching you for the past hour and you look like you're ready to drop. We can finish it in the morning," he says firmly. His laptop is shutting down as he turns back to face her, hoisting his brown leather messenger bag onto his desk to pack his computer away. "We've got the time."

"We always say that, and something always crops up."

"True, but you know I got the meeting with B3 moved to Tuesday, right?"

"I saw it in my calendar yesterday." She smiles gratefully at him. "You're a real star, you know that?"

"I tell myself as much every day," he quips, rising briskly to his feet. He frowns down at her once he's disconnected his laptop and packed it away, the bag he's slung across his torso settling against his hip. "You'll go home soon, yeah?"

"Course I will," she solemnly assures him. "Goodnight, Potter."

"Night, Evans," he returns, and slopes off with his hands in his trouser pockets. "Don't you go killing your sister."

Gosh, he's really bloody lovely.

And _god,_ she's really bloody into him.

Shit.


End file.
